@Farah1 I love your idea about the map. I might have to steal that!
I didn't know about the Christmas card thing. Can you explain how it works?
Yes, what you say about guests is certainly true! I find that guests fall into three categories:
1. Can't wait for them to leave: they don't follow your house rules and range from highly irritating to the kind of disaster stories hosts so often post on these forums.
2. Can be mildly annoying, but are basically quite sweet, friendly people, or not particularly annoying but not friendly and are just looking for a cheap place to stay.
3. The wonderful, fun, friendly but respectful guests who teach you something about their world and take away some insight from yours. Open and adventurous people wanting to really experience another country's culture. Would love to visit them in their own countries.
My French Canadian guests who just left are an example of no.3 . They were absolutely wonderful and have set the bar high.
I am also sometimes given gifts by guests, but so far, only Asian guests (Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese) have given me presents. I think in Asia it is just considered normal etiquette to bring your guest a gift (fans, cake or other food stuffs). It certainly is in Pakistan, where I come from. However, a recent Korean guest gave me such a beautiful gift, I was a bit taken aback. It was a beautiful boxed set of gorgeous Korean tea cups and saucers - the kind of thing you only use for special occasions. I certainly don't expect this kind of gift from my guests, but it was very touching. He probably got annoyed in the end by how many times I thanked him!
